Hold Congress Accountable

About FreedomConnector

Find activists, groups, and events right in your own neighborhood. Join FreedomConnector to get involved and learn more about key issues threatening our economic freedom. Whether you’re looking for like-minded people, trying to boost your existing group’s impact, or simply trying to stay up on current events, FreedomConnector is the place to start. See what’s happening in your state today!

Search FreedomWorks

Resources

Blog

Education: Just Throw More Money At It!

In the last Presidential debate, slated to be a foreign policy debate, President Obama made numerous attempts to shift the focus to education. Yet, his record on education hasn't improved the situation, and the policies he has quietly put in place only add more to the debt the nation's children will have to pay.

The controversial No Child Left Behind education law has been completely gutted under President Obama, with 26 states currently relieved of the duty to make all students proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014. Sidestepping Congress, the Department of Education gave the states waivers in exchange for their agreement to meet new goals which make them eligible for the administration's Race to the Top grants. While No Child Left Behind focused on consequences for schools that failed to meet standards, Race to the Top instead rewards schools for achievement and is aimed at only the bottom 15% of schools.

The cost for the President's new program will be $4.35 billion, which is only a small portion of the $69.8 billion he has proposed for discretionary spending for the Department of Education. Overall, the President's education budget would be a 40% increase from 2008. Despite the President's insistence that increasing spending is the answer to the country's education woes, research has shown performance-based pay does not work. Programs in New York City and California have previously been deemed unsuccessful and pay for performance has been noted as being "more useful politically than it is effective educationally." In the cases of Virginia, Florida and Washington D.C., the President's new grants have even led to race-based goals in order to qualify. While Virginia went back to the drawing board and now have all students with equal proficiency goals, Florida and D.C. were rewarded with money from the Race to the Top program.

As for alternative programs to improve the nation's education, President Obama seems to prefer his grants alone. In their previous debate, that actually had education on the agenda, Governor Mitt Romney brought up his support for school choice. While school choice programs have been extremely successful around the country, the President continues to fight against them. In D.C., he tried to eliminate charter schools completely and only funded the district's scholarship program (that provides students with vouchers) after a bipartisan effort begging him to approve the funding. Even many Democrats have come around to the idea of school choice, seeing it as a civil rights issue. "If rich white kids can go to the school that best fits them, why can't we provide the same opportunity to poor minority kids?"

Ultimately the President is desperately trying to pander to teachers and teacher's unions for votes. His policies don't reflect a President who is serious about changing education in the United States. Should President Obama win re-election, America's public education will continue to disappoint and fail to unlock the potential that resides in the next generation to inherit our country.

I'm glad they gutted NCLB. It was a horrible idea anyway. I'm a public school teacher in a low-income neighborhood and it's impossible to meet the standards set out by NCLB when you are faced with the situation we are faced with. We have only the lowest-performing students at our school, because "school choice" lets the better kids leave and go to charter schools. We have no funding for the materials needed to properly educate the children because the property values in our area are so low, and we get funding partially from the local property taxes. The children are not encouraged to learn at home because their parents are all on welfare and have no motivation themselves, and don't know elementary math, so can't help them with their homework. Everything about the situation is pointing to failure. So what do we do? We take funding away from the kids who need it the most. These kids have everything going against them. They need money for afterschool programs, teachers aids, smaller class sizes, arts programs, computers, etc. to give them the kind of education that removes them from the cycle of poverty. What they DON'T need is to be punished for being in a bad situation. The school is underperforming because it is being set up to fail. Give the kids some help and encouragement and they might have a chance at succeeding. Punish them because they missed AYP by 1 point and you're just feeding the cycle.

Choice creates competition, and competition will lead to public schools losing their monopolies on young minds. This of course is a very good thing, as it means better educations for every American child.

The U.S. Department of Justice must not have much going on these days. There aren’t really any other conclusions to draw considering that they’re spending their time working on keeping children in failing schools. That’s right, the Louisiana Department of Justice has sued the state of Louisiana over school vouchers.

The civil rights issue of our era is improving America’s schools. It is essential that all kids, rich and poor, have the chance to achieve the American dream.To work toward that end, Gov. Robert Bentley recently signed the Alabama Accountability Act. The school choice package allows families with children attending failing schools to receive tax credits to help pay for attendance at a different public school or private school.

For many parents, the decision to put their children in private school comes after a bad experience in public school. For some, however, they decide against traditional public schooling right from the beginning. Today, we’ll look at Kristin, Johnathan, and their two daughters, who are staying away from public school from the word “go.”

For kids around America, school is starting soon. Kids are stocking up on school supplies and learning their new schedules. Parents are making sure that everything is ready for their children to head off to another year of learning. In Ohio, though, some last-minute legislation could change what the upcoming year will look like for families in that state.

In California, parents took control of their children's’ education last year and executed the parent trigger option. After legal battles with the school district, parents chose to make Desert Trails Elementary into a charter school to give their children the best possible education.

America prides itself on being a society in which all are created equal. A country in which we are, as Martin Luther King, Jr. had hoped, people who are not “judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Still, though, there is one major frontier in which all is not equal, and that is in education. Public education in America is such that, in many instances, the quality of a child’s education is determined by where that child lives.